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We’re all familiar with the traditional soda or snack vending machines, but how about a shoe machine? Or a battery vending machine? Today I’ll share some of the world’s strangest vending machines with you…

I’m sorry that I didn’g get back to my posting last Tuesday as planned…funny story actually…I fainted in a drug store and then had to undergo some tests and such, but everythings fine and now I just get to relish in my embarassment. Haha! But anyways, I’m back in action here at Taxidermy and the 20th Century!

Okey dokey. So while I was away on vacation, I started to think about where would be some of the oddest places to travel. Of cource catacombs and haunted houses came to mind, but I was thinking about something more original, per se. So, after some digging I found what I think might be one of the absolute oddest and most beautiful places: The Seldec Ossuary in the Czech Republic.

As chance would have it, I unintentionally used a picture from the Seldec Ossuary in one of my previous posts about a wonderful Facebook page! What initially stood out to me was the artistic nature of the place. Not only is it grand and overwhelming, but it also has a sort of symmetry to it which is captivating.

The Seldec Ossuary is home to between 40,000 to 70,000 humans (well, their remains for that matter). In 1870, the Ossuary realised that it was in a bit of a disarray (a hoarders situation) and had to do something to bring some organization to the place. They hired woodcarver Frantisek Rint to “bring some order” to the place. What he ended up creating was a macebre mass of architecture.

Even though it may seem a bit like a specialised taste to want to visit a place like this, the Seldec Ossuary is actually one of the Czech Republic’s most visited attractions. It attracts over 200,000 visitors a year….hopefully i can add to that number.

As many of you probably already know, Queen Elizabeth II is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee this year!

When she was only 26, Elizabeth was crowned queen. At birth, she had been third in line of secession and it was extremely doubtful that she would ever gain this position. As chance would have it, however, on February 6, 1952 Princess Elizabeth acceded to the throne and one year later (On June 2) she was crowned.

Today kicked off the celebrations with a visit to the Epsom Derby. Surprisingly, the Queen has attended all races here since here coronation in 1952. She even attended one only four days after she was crowned!

In addition to this, numerous celebrations throughout the weekend will celebrate this rare event. On Monday, the BBC will host a concert at Buckingham Palace. On Tuesday all of the celebrations will result in the largest event yet – a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in central London and two following luncheons…not to mention all of the smaller celebrations taking place all around the world.

It is so exciting to be able to witness this once-in-a-lifetime event and an honor to take part in celebrating it.

I have always thought that opening up a zoo of taxidermy would be a wonderful idea. Getting to touch dangerous or exotic animals would be such a mesmerizing experience! However, I recently came across a taxidermy zoo that isn’t quite as enchanting as I expected…

At the Khan Younis Zoo in the Gaza Strip, animals that die are stuffed and then put back on display. Normally, I would cringe at the usage of the word “stuffed” when discussing taxidermy; however in this case that is exactly what is done. Professional taxidermists as well as supplies are scarce here, so the animals are preserved using sawdust and formaldehyde. This grotesque method has led to the animals missing chunks of skin, eyes, and even limbs. This crude method was learned online.

This abundance of decaying animals can be in part due to the lack of veterinary attention (medical advice is given over the phone from a vet in Egypt), hunger, and the dangerous conditions associated with the Gaza Strip.

Conditions don’t improve much for the living animals. In an attempt to create a zebra display, donkeys were painted with stripes. The cages are assembled from fences that surrounded a Jewish settlement in Israel that was dismantled in 2005.

The only animals on display native to the area are the birds. All of the other animals were smuggled in.

Although it is somewhat morbid and macabre, this zoo does provide an otherwise unattainable experience for local children. Many of them would otherwise never get to experience these animals, and even in their despicable state, they are a treat to see.

So perhaps a few of you knew that I was gone to Scotland for 6 days at the end of last week. I went to Edinburgh and then took a town bus out to Rosslyn Chapel for a day (confused? watch the Da Vinci Code), both of which were stunningly beautiful. Like, I can’t even describe to you this sort of beauty. So I’m going to include various photographs that I took that will hopefully describe my travels and include an anecdote or two to make my text seem worthwhile.

First of all, as many of you are probably ignorant of, I adore languages. And there’s nothing better than a good bookstore. Now, I know that lots of people say that there’s unnecessary hype about Blackwell book stores, that they’re a chain and that everyone makes a big deal out of nothing, but I have to say, they have a consistently great, academically oriented selection. Of course, I also tend to go into ones located in university cities. Maybe I’m biased because not many people have whole sections dedicated to linguistics and Anglo-Saxon literature.

Upon browsing the language section in Blackwell book store Edinburgh, I noticed that there were no books on Scottish Gaelic. Now, I’ve wanted to learn Gaelic for a while, and where better to get a book than Scotland? But none. Nothing. Not even Irish or Welsh. I was shocked! They had books on Urdu, Dutch, Basque! But no Gaelic? The original language of the Scots?

So I went up to the register and asked why they had no books on Gaelic in their languages section. The tweedy, buttoned-up fellow behind the counter looked over his glasses at me with a devilish smile and whispered, “Well, we’d get in quite a bit of trouble if we put the Gaelic in the foreign languages section.”

I was so embarrassed! I had completely forgotten that it wasn’t just “languages!”

Furthermore, I just have a newfound love of the Scots in general. They are more practical and lighthearted than the English, and a bit grittier too. It’s simply a different atmosphere, but, despite how much they would protest if they heard this, they are actually remarkably similar too. The English and the Scots both have a stick-to-it-ness that they’re individually proud of and claim the other group doesn’t have enough of. They’re both incredibly tidy (though I don’t think Edinburgh can represent Highland farms, just like clean Oxford streets doesn’t represent Liverpool). Literally, those lovely British buses were so clean, when I sneezed, I felt I had dirtied something precious.

Of course, not only were the buses clean, but also convenient. Edinburgh, while undergoing (endless) tram construction, has a bus system that makes sense. I’m not joking with you. It actually makes sense. There’s cafes and pubs on more than every street corner, literally 2 or 3 a block. Interesting restaurants, sketchy bars, tiny art galleries and tall-ceilinged antique map shops. It was undescribable!